A joint effort of HumanRights360 and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation – Greece, the X Them Out, A Black Map of Athens website intends to record the racially-motivated crimes of the Golden Dawn party and its supporters. Cartoons by a wide variety of contributors create a sombre, emotive record of each incident reported.

Tasos Anastasiou cartoon for X Them Out – Black Map of Athens

“The Golden Dawn trial has brought to light dozens of racist crimes, mostly against migrants and refugees. However the full extent of its criminal, racist activity is not adequately known. With this campaign we attempt to establish a topography of racist violence. We seek to make its dark dimensions and its deadly nature more familiar to the general public. To this end we want to create, with the valuable support of 25 visual artists, an antiracist map of our city.

“Racist violence is invisible only when we do not wish to see it, when we avoid confronting it. This year, 2019, is the crucial, final year of the most important and biggest trial of our time. We have tried to visualise just a small part of this topography of violence that has its origins in Golden Dawn and fascism, in order to contribute to acquainting the general public with their crimes and in punishing their murderous activity.”

X Them Out, A Black Map of Athens

Tasos Anastasiou cartoon for X Them Out – Black Map of Athens

As the criminal trial of Golden Dawn’s leadership – precipitated by the murder of rapper Pavlos Fydssas – enters its finals stages the organisers of X Them Out are seeking additional assistance from cartoonists who may be able to create a record of the process. Audio visual recordings of the court proceedings are forbidden, so cartoonists are invited to attend in the public gallery and create work thereafter, similar to the effort in Turkey during the Cumhuriyet trial of 2017. Financial assistance is available to cover travel expenses.

UPDATE! The award offers two prizes: a €3,000 Grand Prix and another of €1,500 for cartoonists under 26 years of age.

While we normally don’t promote every cartooning contest that comes to our inbox, Deputy Exec. Director Terry Anderson and I concur that this is something singularly important. Women cartoonists, who normally occupy less than 5% of the political cartooning community in recent years have nonetheless emerged as some of the most powerful and effective image-makers in the world. They have carved out a new space for their voices with sharp elbows and sharper pens, especially during and after the Arab Spring movement as well as in Southern Asia.

It is completely appropriate that women have their own exhibitions, their own contests and their own award ceremonies. This competition brings their work not only to the attention of the world but to the attention of the greater cartooning community – especially editors and publishers who are left the poorer if they don’t make space for a diverse range of creative perspectives.

We endorse the competition and invite other cartooning organizations to join with us in celebrating this new effort in recognition of the importance of the satirical voice of 50% of the population. Not simply because they are women, but because they are superb communicators.

If anyone would like to send funds to help in establishing this competition please donate directly to United Sketches or send it to us (the Donate button can be found to the right) earmarked for Women’s Cartoonists International Award. We will make sure your pledge goes straight to the organizers without any administrative costs taken out.

Zunar, winner of our Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award in 2011, is thriving after a long period of adversity as perhaps the biggest year in his career unfolds.

Zunar speaks at Muzium Negeri Pulau Pinang 05/05/19

A little less than two year ago, Zunar found it impossible to mount public events in his home country of Malaysia and in particular the city of Penang. Exhibitions would either be cancelled outright due to threats or would be interrupted by vandals, invariable leading to yet another incident of arrest or criminal charges for the cartoonist rather than the pro-government goons making his life a misery.

Now a major career retrospective – Art of Freedom – is set to open to the public later this month at the Muzium Negeri Pulau Pinang, the state museum in Penang. Such a thing would have been impossible under the previous regime. The videos below show the scale and beautiful presentation of the exhibit. The launch event last weekend was attended by the leader of the parliamentary opposition in Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim.

“I am nearly choking as I say this because I feel sentimental whenever I see Zunar’s artworks. It reminds me of the suffering we both went through together. And these artworks show the tangible suffering Zunar underwent. His works show how important cartoonists are to the country’s development”

The exhibition comes at the same time as Zunar’s memoir, Fight Through Cartoons, which will be available from Saturday. The book covers all the sorry details of the former prime minister Najib Razak and his government’s persecution of the cartoonist, up to an including multiple charges of sedition over Tweets about the afore-mentioned Ibrahim. CRNI’s Executive Director is quoted on the cover blurb:

“Zunar has given us something that is quite rare in the world of human rights and political cartooning. He opens the door into the anatomy of how a tyrant and demagogue uses the tools and institutions of state power to stop the critics that would point the world’s attention to their lawlessness…”

Dr. Robert Russell, Exec. Director, CRNI

Zunar laboured under a travel ban for a substantial period and has been making up for it since his change in fortune following the election of May last year. Most recently he was with Cartooning For Peace’s delegation to the African Union, Addis Ababa for the week of events preceding World Press Freedom Day.

Last year CRNI had a seat on the planning committee for the inaugural Cartooning Global Forum (États Généraux du Dessin de Presse) held at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris, France. The recommendations from this event are released today to help mark #WPFD2019

On World Press Freedom Day we are pleased to endorse the recommendations from the first Cartooning Global Forum, offering guidelines on how the contribution of cartoonists worldwide might best be used to achieve the UN Members States’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, specifically Quality Education, Gender Equality, Reduced Inequalities and Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions.

Representatives from thirty-three international NGOs and cartoonists’ associations, eight universities, museums and archival institutions, ten publishers and media companies and, overall, thirty different nations contributed to the discussion from which these recommendations emerged.

CRNI will continue to assist in the planning and facilitation of the next forum, set to take place at Paris City Hall on October 2nd, 2019. There are a number of ancillary events taking place in the same week elsewhere in the city, as well as meetings before and after as part of the Salon International de la Caricature, du Dessin de Presse et d’Humour, Saint-Just-le-Martel.

Registration for accreditation at the 2019 forum is now open. Cartoonists are encouraged to participate as well as other stakeholders, especially academics, archivists, legal experts and organizations concerned with freedom of expression and protection of creative rights.

Yesterday columnist Yılmaz Özdil, friend of the recently imprisoned cartoonist Musa Kart, wrote an appreciation and placed Kart’s struggle within the context of the long and difficult history of cartoonists and satirists in Turkey. With his permission we present a translation; the original version can be read at Sözcü.com

The first Turkish humor magazine to be published in these lands was Diyojen. It was published by Teodor Kasap. It was banned on the orders of the palace, closed in 1873. Teodor did not give up. When Diyojen were closed he began again with Çıngıraklı and when that was closed, again with Hayal. These cowards, they shut down Teodor! They arrested him and threw him in jail.

Our first cartoonist, Teodor had drawn Karagöz and Hacivat in his caricature, and it was this that ultimately caused him to go to prison. He drew Karagöz’s in leg shackles. “What is this?”, Karagöz asks. “Freedom under the law” replies Hacivat. For this crime the sentence was three years.

The Young Turks then took up the banner of humor. They published magazines like Dolap, Beberuhi, Pinti, Tokmak. But not here, they worked from Geneva or London, forced into exile. They weren’t even allowed to step into the country. During the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II the creation of a cartoon was a great crime. The editor in the first issue of Tokmak explained this painful situation as follows: ”It is in vain to expect humour from our magazine, but instead hüngür hüngür gülmek best expresses it; we laugh rather than cry our eyes out.”

The humor of the Republican era began with the Markopaşa magazine, under Aziz Nesin, Sabahattin Ali, Rıfat Ilgaz and Mim Uykusuz. Again a criminal case was filed and the magazine was closed. For this reason, they continued publishing as and when they could under a banner heading “the times when the authors are not in prison”. Their distribution to vendors was banned so copies were handing out on the streets but even under those circumstances a truly unbelievable circulation of seventy thousand copies was achieved. A series of new titles were adopted for essentially the same magazine: Markopaşa, Merhumpaşa, Malumpaşa. Eventually Sabahattin Ali was assassinated. A fire bomb nearly killed Aziz Nesin. Rıfat Ilgaz was arrested but escaped. Mim Uykusuz was arrested on numerous occasions and his work banned, meaning his caricatures generally were signed with aliases.

During the rise of the Demokrat Parti it was decreed that satirical cartoons “damaged the multi-party democratic order”. Lawsuits were pursued for this ridiculous reason and cartoonists were imprisoned for “damaging democracy”. Concerning humor magazines, the decision was often made to confiscate before release, rendering cartoon material contraband! Turhan Selçuk was the most tried during this time. His well-known Abdülcanbaz character was born when the Demokrat Parti collapsed and Turkish society’s nightmares truly began.

Kenan Evren would go on to shut down the Association of Cartoonists and demolish the Museum of Humor.

The world-renowned Gırgır magazine was the next target. In 2006 a molotov cocktail was thrown at the statue of Oguz Aral’s famous character Avanak Avni. It was repaired but in 2007 its fixtures were damaged and in the same year set on fire. It was again repaired and again attacked in 2008, smashed with a sledgehammer. It was erected in front of Kadıköy Cartoon House, ripped up and stolen from its pedestal. This is the reward for fame.

And then the great leader of the 21st century, President Erdoğan. He sued over being drawn as a cartoon kitten by Musa Kart. He sued over being drawn as a giraffe, elephant, monkey, camel, frog, snake, cow and duck on the cover of Penguen magazine too. And he filed a lawsuit against the caricature as a blood-sucking tick on the cover of LeMan. But Kart, who drew his last cartoon on Christmas Day 2017, became a singular obsession. Musa Kart escaped prosecution in normal times but the attempted coup of 2016 and subsequent state of emergency helped the president enormously.

Nine months of detention, then out, but not over. The government regrouped, sleeping on it for a year. And as of yesterday the iron bars were put in place again. But on the contrary…

Take a look at this caricature of Kart’s drawn in the early 2000s. When Fetullah Gulen leaked to the Turkish Armed Forces the authorities were obsequious but Musa was unconvinced. Time and again his cartoons were a warning. If we collect all his anti-FETO caricatures we’d have a book. Yet now, shamelessly, he is put in prison for the second time and all as a fetish to please an obsessive.

An exciting initiative for the promotion of under-represented cartoonists and celebration of their work.

United Sketches, the organisation for refugee and displaced cartoonists established by our friend and colleague Kianoush Ramezani, has announced a new cartooning award dedicated exclusively to women.

The Prix International Des Dessinatrices De Presse has been created in consultation with a committee of women cartoonists, including CRNI supporter Ann Telnaes, and will be judged by an all-female panel from across multiple professions. Cartoonists are invited to submit work on the themes of “Climate Change” and “Equality”. The deadline is August 31st 2019. Full details of how to submit cartoons, the judging process and future plans for the cartoons are available online.

“… equality is still a dream to be achieved in the 21st century! United Sketches international organization offers this annual award exclusively to women cartoonists to fight patriarchy and inequality.”

United Sketches

Generally speaking CRNI does not concern itself with the vital but very crowded field of international cartoon contests, festivals and prizes. However as a human rights organisation we recognise absolutely the need to address inequality wherever it exists. In short, women’s rights are human rights. Unlike some we reject the contention that goodwill and meritocracy alone will redress the imbalance in a profession that remains stubbornly male. Affirmative action is required. We commend United Sketches in their effort and wish those entering every success.

UPDATE! The award offers two prizes: a €3,000 Grand Prix and another of €1,500 for cartoonists under 26 years of age.